I recently encountered a YouTube commenter who posted: “I would never rely on the words of an atheist, no matter how much of an expert he is.” Of course, I had to reply. “Why?” I wrote, “Is it simple religious bigotry, or your own ignorance about what it means to be an atheist? I suspect …

The original Catholic Encyclopedia (which I shall hereafter refer to as CE1907) was published in fifteen volumes over the period 1907–1913. It is an impressive, respectable production. Largely, I cannot argue with its introductory claim, to be a work of “the foremost Catholic scholars in every part of the world . . . with the …